THE LOVE

CONNECTION:
God’s Love and
Our Response
What is love?
Why should I love
God?
How should I show my
love to God?
I. What is love?
1 Cor 13:4-7
4 
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not
boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not
self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.
John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life
for one’s friends.
I. What Love is a selfless and sacrificial
commitment for the good of others,
is love? even unto death.
Five different ways the Bible speaks of the love of God

1. The peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the
Father.
2. God’s providential love over all that he has made.
3. God’s salvific stance toward his fallen world.
4. God’s particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect.
5. God’s love is sometimes said to be directed toward his own people
in a provisional or conditional way —conditioned, that is, on
obedience.

Source: “The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God” by D. A. Carson

II. Why should I love
God?
A. God wants you to love Him because He is love.

1 John 4:16
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in
them.

Mark 12:30
30 
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
B. Love God because He loves you and desires a
relationship with you.

1 John 3:1
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we
should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
The reason the world does not know us is that it did not
know him.
II. Why A. God wants you to love Him
should I because He is love.
love B. Love God because He loves you
and desires a relationship with you.
God?
III. How should I show
my love to God?
A. Love God by obeying commandments.

John 14:21
21 
Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who
loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my
Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
B. Love God by worshiping him and praising Him for His
love for you.

Ps 122:1
I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the
house of the LORD.”
C. Love God by helping other and being a Christlike
example to them.

Heb 6:10
10 
God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the
love you have shown him as you have helped his people
and continue to help them.
III. How A. Love God by obeying
should I commandments.
B. Love God by worshiping him and
show my praising Him for His love for you.
love to C. Love God by helping other and
being a Christlike example to them.
God?
 Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death
38 

nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither

Promise the present nor the future, nor any
from God: powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God that is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.